Ilka Tampke's new novel, 'How to Love the World', presents a unique narrative structure, unfolding across two distinct timelines. The primary storyline follows Nellika, a woman who awakens to find herself gravely injured and trapped beneath a substantial fallen tree branch in a forest. Her predicament sets the stage for a tense, moment-by-moment account of her struggle for survival, with subheadings meticulously marking the passage of time during this harrowing day.
Interwoven with Nellika's immediate fight for freedom and consciousness are flashbacks, marked by the recurring subheading 'Earlier'. These fragments reveal the complexities of her past, detailing a difficult argument with her teenage children on the very morning of the accident, and further back, her life as an artist, mother, daughter, and partner. A poignant portrait emerges of a woman who grappled with a sense of being 'difficult' from childhood, a consequence of perceived neglect and humiliation at the hands of her parents. The novel explores Nellika's yearning to break this cycle of intergenerational pain, aspiring to provide 'safety and nourishment' to her own children, despite her own struggles with explosive rage.
The forest, initially a place of retreat for Nellika from the stresses of her life, transforms into a vital element of her survival strategy. As she lies trapped, her heightened attention to the minutiae of her natural surroundings becomes a mechanism for staying awake and present. This intense observation of the natural world, from a single falling leaf to the intricate details of the forest floor, is a central theme, highlighting a profound connection to the environment even in extreme duress.
'How to Love the World' is positioned as a work of decolonial ecofeminism, advocating for a deep, radical immersion in the 'more-than-human world and its intelligences'. The novel explores the idea that nature can offer a pathway to healing and self-discovery, even when facing a profound sense of 'placelessness'. Nellika's reckoning with her past and her ancestral disconnect from the land is tempered by the forest's ability to ground her in the present moment.
While the novel's political and philosophical underpinnings are broadly appreciated, critical reception suggests it demands a particular kind of engagement from the reader. The narrative's preference for precise, almost report-like descriptions over figurative language means that a slow, attentive reading is required to fully appreciate Nellika's experience. This meticulous cataloguing of detail, though central to the protagonist's survival strategy, can at times lead to a slower pace, requiring patience from those accustomed to more rapid narrative progression.